Volume 5, Chapter 28 – A Saint Descends

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

The moment Bai Xiang finished speaking, black rifts suddenly split open across the azure sky around them. In an instant, nearly ten Daoists dressed like Yu Wenyue and Zhang Shuping stepped out, all of them fixing Bai Xiang with stern gazes.

“Your Majesty the Xia Emperor’s way of thinking is extremely dangerous.” The smile on Yu Wenyue’s face gradually disappeared as well.

“Since Your Majesty the Xia Emperor refuses to heed advice, we can only… urgh!?”

The rest caught in his throat, because Bai Xiang had already raised the Shenming Sword. Wave after wave of silent sword-cries spread outward through vibration-force, and in the blink of an eye they swept up the heaven-and-earth origin qi within a hundred-li radius, while also sealing off the propagation of every sound through the air.

Shenming Sword: Forbidden-Method Void Domain.

A move not seen for a long time was unleashed once more, instantly engulfing every cultivator on the battlefield. Venerable-realm cultivators such as Yu Wenyue and Zhang Shuping could still rely on the power of their Divine Pools to remain suspended in the air, but many more could not. Those whose Divine Pool laws did not include flight, those who had never developed the ability to stay aloft, and those who had not even condensed a Divine Pool at all and had merely forced themselves up to watch the battle all began dropping from the sky like dumplings. Their faces twisted in terror midair, yet no matter how wide they opened their mouths, they could not scream.

In the past, after a move like Forbidden-Method Void Domain, she would have followed with Tribulation Lotus. Using the Vibration Art to control the morphological changes of celestial origin qi and thus create the most lethal qi-path lightning arts out of thin air had once been Bai Xiang’s best option.

But things were different now. She was already in the Divine Palace Realm.

To Bai Xiang as she was now, qi-path lightning arts lacked efficiency. Especially after she had intermittently mastered the half of the Xuandi Scripture in the Sky Sea, it had become natural for her to reflect on the methods she had created in the past.

If I can already interfere with the surrounding void through the Vibration Art, and these people being choked so badly they cannot even speak is proof that its effects are already working, then why would I go out of my way to create lightning arts just to kill them?

Isn’t the effect of ‘Vibration Art: Sound Suppression’ already in force? Why should I use that effect only to silence sound, instead of using it to take lives directly?

So… what came after was very simple.

Holding the sword in her right hand in a formal sword salute, Bai Xiang lightly flicked the blade with her left hand, and a soft chant left her mouth.

“Taishang. Hereby. Gives. Order…”

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“Forbid. Law. Life.”

And then, very naturally,

those busybodies who had fallen from the sky, trying to watch the excitement,

those field-dao experts who had surrounded Bai Xiang earlier and were not part of the Sacred Court,

and those who had rushed over by tearing open black rifts, whose comprehension of field-dao was comparatively weak, who had taken the full force of Forbidden-Method Void Domain head-on the moment they arrived, and who could neither stay aloft nor speak,

all of them, at the exact same instant, silently exploded into clouds of blood.

For everyone who participated in this calamity, witnessed it, and had the fortune to survive it, this was without question the most horrifying scene they had ever seen in their lives.

The sky in their vision was broad and blue, yet not a single sound could be heard.

Not the clamor, not the curses, not the cries, not the explosions caused by divine abilities and their aftershocks.

Even the movement of air, the white noise of daily life that people never consciously noticed, their own heartbeats, their own breathing… all sound had vanished.

It was as if, during that stretch of time, the authority of ‘making sound’ had been ripped out of all things. In that endless, deathly silence, only chaotic images flashed wildly. They were all blood, the ‘wails’ of the weak under the sword of the Imperial Dao, expressed in color and image.

Bmm…

It seemed to last only a few seconds, yet it also seemed to last several hundred years.

Then, in the next instant, the entire tide of sound contracted and returned, surging into everyone’s ears like an ocean tide. Whether they were Venerable Saints at the field-dao realm or ordinary mortals who knew nothing of cultivation, every living person touched by that one sword-strike coughed out a mouthful of heart’s blood, the breathing and circulation within their bodies thrown completely into chaos.

Yu Wenyue, Zhang Shuping, and the others suffered worst of all. When Bai Xiang’s sword took effect, the jade swords held by these Sacred Court members lit up one after another. As the other Venerables exploded into blood mist and perished, these jade swords shattered in sync, as if they had paid some price to die in their stead once.

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All they could do was freeze in midair and struggle to hold on. Some had their eardrums burst by the returning wave of sound, some had their heads explode outright, and some spewed blood wildly in mouthful after mouthful. Every one of them was heavily injured by the aftermath.

Yu Wenyue immediately activated the laws of his Divine Pool, trying to restore his heart meridians, but in the next moment his expression froze on his face. The injury would not heal?

His heart meridians had been repaired, yes, but his soul…? His damaged soul could not recover…?

The undying art most prized by Venerables and Immortal Venerables had actually been broken by this single sword-strike?

What kind of sword art was this?

Yu Wenyue exchanged glances with his companions, and each saw the shock in the other’s eyes.

By all rights, all of them possessed cultivation comparable to Venerables and Immortal Venerables, and had even reached the highest tier of that level, field-dao. People like them should have been extraordinarily sensitive to changes in the laws across a wide area. How could they possibly have had no ability at all to resist this sword?

That alone was already terrifying enough, but what they had not expected was that Bai Xiang’s terror was not yet over. The soul injuries caused by this sword could not be repaired with Divine Pool laws.

What did that mean?

If the Holy Lord had not bestowed upon each of them a Heart-Abiding Bright-Soul Sword to ward off disaster, they had no doubt that their fate would have been no different from those clouds of blood. They too would have died silently beneath this sword.

From this, they realized a horrifying fact: a sword art like this could not possibly belong to the same realm as people like them.

Wouldn’t that mean…

“Your…”

Zhang Shufang’s mouth was stained with blood, and two streaks of blood ran from her eyes as she trembled and asked Bai Xiang, “May I ask, Your Majesty the Xia Emperor, your current realm… could it be…?”

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As she spoke, her eyes were fixed elsewhere. She did not dare look directly at Bai Xiang anymore.

“So you all thought that when I was enfeoffed back then, I relied on a Guarding-Order treasure.”

Bai Xiang’s gaze swept across the field, and there was even a trace of disappointment in her eyes.

“It never occurred to you that I might push the ultimate limit of qi methods one level higher?”

She admitted it…

She actually… she had really admitted it just like that…

As Bai Xiang acknowledged their guess, a fear deeper than hell itself descended in full at that very moment.

Yu Wenyue, Zhang Shufang, and the spear-wielding old man who had survived only by relying on a life-saving treasure, every one of them began to tremble, their minds going blank.

The ultimate limit of qi methods…

She had said the ultimate limit of qi methods…

According to the qi-method ranks Eastern Xia had made public, she should have been at the Origin Realm back then.

With only Origin Realm cultivation, she had already been capable of fighting against field-dao experts like Pang Tiandao. And now she had broken through one more realm?

If Pang Tiandao’s realm broke through once more, what would that be?

A Great Sage?

A true Saint? A supreme realm like that of the Holy Lord?

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The moment they thought that they had just been lecturing a Saint, and had even tried to threaten one, they started trembling even harder.

The spear-wielding old man in particular was shaking so violently that he could barely keep hold of even half his spear shaft.

“Is this all you have?”

Bai Xiang even waited for a while, only to find that no retaliation came. Not one of them had the courage to make a move against her.

“Fine.”

She tipped her chin once.

“If this is all that the so-called Immortal Alliance and Sacred Court amount to, then Northern Yu…”

“[Why cling so stubbornly to grudges from the last epoch, even today?]”

Along with a vast, boundless, immensely penetrating broadcast voice, a meteor suddenly flew in from the edge of the sky. It reached the crowd almost instantly, revealing a brown-haired man clad in a technological battlesuit of white with blue trim.

“And who are you?”

Bai Xiang looked him over with curiosity.

High nose bridge, deep-set eyes.

His clothing and appearance did not make him look like someone from Northern Yu or Xuanxia. Instead, he resembled the main ethnic stock of the Star Sea Federation, that is, the peoples from before the Sacred Weapon Clan established itself.

“My name is Hanmeng.” The brown-haired man smiled at Bai Xiang. “I greet Your Majesty the Xia Emperor here.”